Sign Up for Swamplot Emails:

Stripped-Down Texas Cafeteria Now Getting Covered Back Up on N. Shepherd Dr.

A construction crew is currently at work around and on top of the bare former site of Texas Cafeteria, shielded from prying eyes on N. Shepherd Dr. by a small dirt pile. MFT Development (the group currently planning new and mixed uses for the site of the increasingly romantic former Heights Finance Station post office) is dressing up the space at the corner with 24th St. as another restaurant and maybe some retail, following the joint’s sale, shutdown, and stripping in early 2015. Behind the property to the right, the Fiesta Mart can be seen across 24th counting down to its March 27th closing, as the flags from Monterrey Tire Center peek over the former cafeteria’s roof.

Here’s a rendering of what the planned buildout could look like, plus or minus some tenant signage:

***

The design for the new exterior come from Tipps Architecture, which also worked on the health-, junk-, and pet-food retail strip now at the corner of 20th and Rutland streets where the Baptist Temple buildings used to be. A spokesman for MFT told Swamplot in February that the group was seeking a restaurant to lease about half of the 6,000 sq. ft. in the redone space, the shell of which they hope to wrap up later this spring.

Here’s what the space looked like before last spring’s stripdown:

And a further throwback, to what the spot looked like prior to the remodel just a few years before by Sandlin Custom Designs: